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History

Abileen was a long time coming for its leader, Heidi Phillips. After all, she had been the leader of Kansas City's mightiest band in the mid '90s Frogpond, with a major label album and a major national tour that's dissolution left her disillusioned with the business of music.

"We had a good run," Phillips reflects. "We put out two records including one on Columbia Records. We played hundreds of shows all over the country; some for two people, some for 2,000, some for even more than that. We met some great people like Mike Mills from R.E.M., who asked us to play their Monster Tour wrap-up party, which, of course, we did. We played club dates with the Goo Goo Dolls and their 1999 amphitheater tour with Sugar Ray, mostly on the second stage but some on the main stage."

While Frogpond had started as a four-girl band in 1994, only two of the original members remained by the second album. By 2000, the group had split up for good.

"For a couple of years, I didn't even pick up a guitar," Phillips said. "You can call it burn out or you can call it gaining perspective, but whatever it was, I finally realized I just wasn't my complete self unless I was playing music, so I'm back."

Actually, Heidi started to come back about two years ago by playing the occasional solo acoustic shows and then started to put together Abileen. Phillips, who is the primary songwriter and singer and also plays guitar, first looked to Marty Robertson as lead guitarist and backing vocals. Phillips was familiar with Robertson who had toured with Frogpond during the second CD through to the finish. They found Danny Krause to complement them on background vocals and play bass.

"Marty and I were searching vigorously for a bass player and both knew Danny," Phillips said. "I said to Marty, 'I wish Danny played bass' and Marty said, 'he does'."

They had trouble finding a drummer, but they finally hooked up with Jeff McGinness, who had played in various KC bands. Now, Phillips feels like they're a band.